A Biblical Marketplace

My granddaughter came over last night after school and showed me what she had made at a very interesting and special place -- on a field trip.

She said that they passed by her tumbling studio on Manchester Road to get there, but beyond that she didn't know where they went.  She said the place took up two floors.

Her class went to a recreation of a biblical marketplace, something like what Jesus would have experienced as a child.  She was absolutely enchanted by the place, and learned a lot in a short time.

She made a placemat (I think it was) by weaving strips of cloth in between slits in another piece of cloth.  She said that this craft represented the art of weaving which would have been a very important part of a woman's life in Jesus' time.

She made a bracelet out of different beads which would have been yet another commodity at a marketplace. 

And somewhere along the line, she got a dreidel which is the main part of a game that Jesus would have played.  It's like an early die (singular of dice) that the children would toss.  Today it is still used by the Jewish people during Hannukkah, the festival of lights. 

For my granddaughter, Jesus was now a real boy, playing with toys and living near a bustling marketplace with all sorts of sights and sounds.  It brought Jesus' humanity to life for her -- a wonderful experience!!

We can read all kinds of books about what life was like in the time of Jesus, but there is nothing like experiencing it in some fashion.

I read an article the other day about children and how our society tends to "push" them with educational experiences too early.  The article said that children should be playing prior to school.  Children learn through play.  Have you ever watched a kitten?  Everything that a kitten needs to know in order to defend itself is learned during play.  Maybe that's a good comparison to what play is for children.  They learn the typical give and take of games, and develop their verbal and nonverbal skills to a much higher degree.  They also learn to read the faces and cues of the other children around them.  This is unbelievably important in life.  It helps make sense of all social situations.

Children who don't get that time to play and just be a kid are stifled in a number of important ways.  We need to get over this competitiveness about our kids and just enjoy them and let them develop as God intended them to.  Children are ready to read when everything else is ready for them to read; their eyes, parts of the brain, and even their motor skills.  Pushing them to read sooner does real damage, the article suggested.

I think the biblical marketplace was ingenious and wonderful.  It will be something my granddaughter and her classmates won't soon forget.  Learning by doing.

Take care and have a good Thursday, everyone.